


Provocateur

by Arya_Greenleaf



Series: Fine Underthings [2]
Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: Awkward First Times, Bisexual Character, Clothed Sex, F/M, First Time, Frottage, Lingerie, M/M, Nude Photos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27534535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: Joanna has an excellent gift for Bill, something that delivers on everything promised by the tag attached. Perhaps, it delivers a littletoomuch. When their fun is found out, things between Bill and Ted change significantly.
Relationships: Elizabeth/Ted "Theodore" Logan, Joanna/Bill S. Preston Esq., Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq.
Series: Fine Underthings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967566
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Provocateur

**Author's Note:**

> I can't keep track of my own Circuits of Time. Pretend Rufus played _Angel Dust_ for BnT before he left 1991 so they already know about the Commodores cover. I was trying to be clever and make a sneaky Bogus Journey reference and I must admit failure.
> 
> Limited canon typical use of "fag."

Bill’s eyes grow wide when he sticks his hand in the glossy department store bag. _A present for you_ , Joanna had said. He’d assumed it was something for her to wear and him to see, something most magnificent. Something with ribbon and lace, fit for a princess. Something like the girls on his walls when he was a teenager. He pulls the delicate feeling thing from the crinkly white tissue paper and drapes it over his hand. He traces the swirl of the eyelet lace with his fingertips and swallows hard.

“It’s -- umm -- it’s -- _it’s_ \--”

Joanna bites her lip and grins. “It’s for you.”

Bill is confused. He knows that it’s for him, she’d told him that. “Yeah?”

“I’m fairly certain the size is right.”

“I’d hope so!” he laughs. He doesn’t understand babe sizing but Jo’s lived in San Dimas long enough to get the hang of it, hasn’t she?

“Well, I used your pants size and then I measured that one nice shirt. The one you wore to the bank after the _Battle_.” Bill feels like he’s missing something of utmost importance. “Will you wear it tonight? Bess has Thea -- we’ve got the whole place to ourselves.” She grins even wider, thoroughly entertained. “No need to worry about anyone fussing.” She purses her lips and raises her brow. “Except for you, that is.”

“ _Hey_ , I’m not fussy,” Bill can’t help the pout on his face. “You’re fussy,” he whispers. The thread of it all starts finally slipping into place, poked through the eye of the needle after bending and missing a dozen times. “This… this is for _me_.”

He finally takes the _garment_ out of the bag completely and his heart thuds in his chest nervously. When he turns back to Joanna her cheeks are flushed pink. Bill holds the thing up to give it a good look -- it’s like a bathing suit; all dark, black lace and mesh. It’s simple, honestly, not frilly. Bill gulps hard and crumples it in his hands, the corner of a cardstock _La Perla_ tag jabbing his palm.

“I can take it back,” Joanna starts. She sits up straight, moving away from Bill on the couch. “I just thought -- well, I _thought_ \--” She stands and steps a few paces away, stops and puts her hands on her hips. “After the other night. And, _well_. All of those things that you said the night after when we…”

Bill had put on the underwear as a joke. A lark. To tease her about leaving them on the bathroom floor. But the way Jo had looked at him -- how she’d touched him like she wasn’t sure if he was real or a most surprising phantasm… The way he’d _felt_ with such a nice thing against his skin -- how he’d looked when he finally checked himself out in the bathroom mirror after Jo had fallen asleep.

Bill hadn’t told her that he’d tried to put her nightgown on a few days later. He’d been _most_ embarrassed when it didn’t fit. More, really, that he’d been stuck in it for a frightening moment with his arms twisted above his head in the python-grip of the slippy-slidey fabric.

But Bill _had_ told her about it _in theory_. How he thought it would feel on his body. How the skirt would swish around when he moved and stick to his legs. How it would be to slide against each other with it on and how it would get all bunched up between them when she climbed on top of him.

“The lady at Macy’s said it was Italian and when I’m from that generally means it’s something of lovely quality,” Jo says a little matter-of-fact. “It feels very nice,” she whispers, taking her hands off her hips and folding them nervously in front of her.

Bill is very aware of the _thumpthumpthump_ against his sternum and the heat in his cheeks when he looks up at Joanna. “I don’t think I can put this on.”

Joanna gasps quietly and covers her mouth delicately with her hand. “I’m so sorry, Bill. I shouldn’t have assumed -- really. Give it here, I’ll return it first thing.” She’s talking too fast and everything is kind of blurring into one run-on word.

“No, no -- I mean by myself. I’m afraid I’ll rip it.” He gulps, embarrassment bubbling up in the spaces between his guts. He _wants_ to wear it. He wants to feel it on his body. “Will you, um, will you help me?” Jo gapes like a fish for a few seconds before she nods, her cheeks flushed all delicate and pink. “Can we go in the bedroom, though?” 

“Now?” she asks, a little surprised. 

“Yeah. I think… yeah. Yes.” 

She nods again and steps out of the way to let him lead her. He holds his head up, trying his best to call forth the moxie he had on all those auditions when he and Ted still pretty much sucked.

In the bedroom, Bill carefully sets the little shopping bag down on the nightstand and starts to undress. He takes his cap off first and shakes out his hair and then starts to drag his feet out of his shoes. Something catches in the corner of his vision -- Jo’s blouse landing on the bed. Bill turns and puts his hands up, shaking his head. “You, um, you stay dressed,” he says, his voice cracking with a most anxious jolt.

“I thought we’d -- “

“Not yet,” he reasons. He lets his shoulders fall back and sticks his chest out, trying to look more confident than he feels at the moment. “I wanna try it on first, you know?”

Joanna nods and steps closer, smiling softly when she touches his face and combs his hair back with her fingers. She laughs when it springs back into place. “You can change your mind whenever you want.” When she rubs the tip of her nose against his, Bill feels like his stomach is full of butterflies. “But right now _I_ want you out of this shirt.” She laughs again and starts to push the flannel off his shoulders with one hand and tug the hem of his teeshirt up with the other.

“A very impatient princess,” Bill says, lips pursed and brow raised.

“Quite, I shall issue a royal order if I must.”

When he’s undressed down to his shorts Bill can’t help but feel a little bashful again. “Should I keep these on?” he asks. He’s never really had to try things on like this before. Swim trunks, maybe, but they’re so easy to buy right off the rack. He’s seen Jo try things on before -- at home or snuck into the ladies’ dressing room at the mall trying to be quiet about their crime -- she keeps her underwear on and tucks and folds everything together to get a better look. There’s even a sticker on the mirror asking people to do it. He imagines how silly he’s going to look with his blue shorts hanging out of the bottom of the bodysuit. It threatens to put him off the whole thing _most_ completely.

“Mm, maybe? Just to make sure.” Jo notices something about the way Bill is feeling and crosses her arms. “Less stress,” she assures him, maybe herself too. Less vulnerable, Bill thinks but doesn’t say out loud.

The whole rest of the world falls away when Joanna sinks gracefully to her knees. The smooth motion of it is always astonishing and hypnotic to Bill. Joanna jokes and says that it's all the curtsying she did before he found her. For all Bill knows or cares, while he watches Jo shake out the delicate, Italian lingerie, the rest of the world outside of their bedroom really has fallen entirely away.

Joanna laughs, looking up at Bill from so very far away. “Well? Aren’t you going to step in?” 

She’s holding the lacy, racy thing out just in front of him and Bill feels like it might be a sacrilegious offense of the most high degree that he’s about to stick his foot inside while it’s still covered by his faded, green sock. Joanna smiles up at him, patient and sunny. Bill picks his foot up off the floor.

Jo takes care when she slides the bodysuit up Bill’s legs, holding it with the flat of her fingers tucked against her palms -- just to be sure her nails don’t go through the lace, she says. It’s slow going getting it up over his thighs. Squats have been working, at least, Bill thinks. It’s probably more a credit to those Jane Fonda tapes Jo has a collection of, but he won’t ever tell anyone that. It feels a little un-dudely. He almost laughs at himself for the thought, remembering the position he’s in. He’s doing it though, isn’t he? And he’s a dude. So it all must be _most_ dudley by rights. Right?

Bill can’t look down at himself with the legs of his shorts hanging out of the bottom of the bodysuit. He tries to occupy himself with getting it up over his waist and Jo smacks his hands away as she gets to her feet, a determined set to her pinched mouth. She stands very close and the lace and mesh goes _up, up, up_ and over Bill’s torso.

“Arms,” Jo says softly and Bill obliges. The straps only get caught for a moment while they work it all out and then they’re up on his shoulders and it’s like he’s being hugged all over. Jo steps back and has a look at him. Her chin quivers and her lips move and her cheeks and her ears turn more red by the second.

“So?”

“I think it fits very well,” she says with a frog lodged in her throat. “And I think you’re breathing very hard.” She wraps one arm around herself and lays the other hand against her chest and that's all red, too, Bill notices now with her very pale fingers there against it. Bill turns to look in the long mirror on the closet door and she flings a hand out to stop him. “Don’t look. You’ll think yourself quite silly and not want to keep it. Your shorts, you know.”

Bill tries not to look too much. He flexes his toes and shifts from one foot to the other. He carefully passes his hands over the front of himself. The top of the suit isn’t like a bra, it hasn’t got those cup things, like it’s made for someone without much going on. It sticks close to the shape of his pecs and he thanks Jane Fonda anyway -- screw it, she deserves the credit. He twists back and forth to feel how it all moves against his skin and freezes when he remembers he’s being looked at.

“How does it feel?” Jo asks, stepping up close to him again. Bill has to close his eyes for a second because he’s gonna lose his nerve. She likes it -- she likes it a lot. It’s _most_ obvious and it makes Bill feel triumphant and totally bogus all at once.

“Awkward,” he finally admits. “Tight? It -- ah -- um…” His hands have been kind of waving on their own and they decide they’re going to behave and he covers himself with them and tries to make his dick sit right but it’s mostly useless.

Joanna frowns and Bill can see the gears in her head turning around. “What if you, _mm_?” She takes his hands and moves them up toward his belly button.

“That -- um -- that would work.” He gulps hard and squeezes his eyes shut again and thinks of mnemonics so he doesn’t have to think about anything else. _Every amp deserves guitars and basses everyday. Eat apples daily, grow big ears. Every acid dealer gets busted eventually._

“Excellent,” Jo whispers.

Very suddenly the doorbell buzzes and Bill swears in a most non-gentlemanly way.

“Who could that possibly be? It’s the middle of the day.”

Bill cringes. “I ordered pizza.”

“Oh, gracious. When did you have time to do that?” He’d done it right before she came home, not expecting her back just then. Jo grabs Bill’s shirt off the bed and swings it around her shoulders. She sprints through the little apartment and down the stairs to answer the door. Bill has the bodysuit off again by the time she comes back and he’s considering it in his hands very carefully. “Oh! Well then, pizza in our underwear, it is.” She grins and sheds Bill’s shirt and her jeans in a hurry, yanking him by the wrist out of the room.

* * *

Ted whistles to himself as he lopes down to the basement with an over-full basket of laundry in his arms. He has to slow down at the bottom, almost falling out of Elizabeth’s slippers. He really should find where his own have gone to but hers are much comfier than his were, wherever they are. 

The house is very weirdly quiet. Ted is the only one home. Bill is at the studio working on something. The tall ladies have gone out to _Gymboree_ with the small ladies -- who are really getting pretty tall pretty fast and it’s a little scary if Ted is totally honest. 

Billie’s tiny leggings are already looking just a tiny bit too short, he thinks as he grabs a handful of small clothing and tosses it into the washing machine. He grins as he pours in the soap powder and cranks the knobs to start. He’s been working around the house all morning -- dishes and dusting and laundry and all of the boring housekeeping things he can think of. 

The apartment’s gotten to be kind of a mess, him and Bess pushing a lot of it aside lately. There’s just so much going on! The _Stallyns_ are in the homestretch on recording their album and Billie’s had the grossest, worst cold. Ted feels like they’ve been up to their ears in tissues. But Billie’s seeming better now and they just have the last track to finish mixing, Ted is almost positive. It’ll be nice to have a fresh start and Bess will be most pleasantly surprised to come home to everything tidied up.

Ted pushes the laundry basket out of the way with his foot and looks down confused when it doesn’t go very far. “Oh no,” he mumbles. Bill and Jo’s basket is on the floor next to the washer. He guesses it’s not too much of an offense to have cut in line since they’re not home. He’ll put it in as soon as his is finished and by the time the house is full up again it’ll be in the dryer and they’ll have a toasty-warm blanket for Thea’s afternoon nap.

Ted nearly faceplants on his way back upstairs and he’s just glad that no one is around to see it.

He’s very satisfied with himself when he heads back down to the basement later on. He’d run out to the grocery store and got the twirly pasta and white sauce Bess liked and he’s totally going to make her a five-star Logan dinner. There’s even some garlic bread in the freezer which is his favorite part of any dinner at a restaurant. 

He pins all of Billie’s clothes to the crazy looking carousel and dumps the remainder into the drier, nearly forgetting his intentions to be the most considerate of housemates when he turns back toward the stairs.

“Oh, yeah!”

Ted dances back to the washing machine and hoists the full basket off the floor to balance on the edge of the machine, bopping to the rhythm of the dryer. It’ll balance itself out in a minute, he thinks, always does. It doesn’t like it when there’s too many jeans but the robotic temper tantrum is always short-lived.

Ted starts to slide the first things off the top into the washer and something fluttering out of the folds of a towel catches his eye. He reaches down into the machine and -- _ow_ , bumps his head when the lid falls down -- and grabs whatever it is that fell. The glossy white square slips under the agitator and Ted has to pinch at the corner to slide it back out. It’s a pair of Polaroids, he realizes, with their picture-sides stuck together. He gets one of them to slide out and has to really reach his fingers under and grab the corner with his nail to get the other. Finally rescued, he puts them on top of the wiggling, noisy dryer and dumps the rest of the laundry in a little more carefully. 

With both machines going and the vibration of it all ringing through his head, Ted looks down at the Polaroids. “Whoah!”

Ted smacks his hand over his eyes, knowing he wasn’t meant to see the pictures. Knowing nobody was meant to see them. He feels like he’s guilty of a most heinous crime and doesn’t know how to solve it. He didn’t see much, he reasons. A lot of leg and arm. A bathing suit, maybe. They could be perfectly innocent. Photos from the time they went out to Santa Carla for the weekend last summer. He turns around in place and puts his hands around his face like blinders and marches back up the stairs.

Forty-five minutes ticks by slowly and Ted forgets about the Polaroids. _Days of Our Lives_ is most engrossing, even now that it’s not just daytime company when he’s home sick from school. He feels only a little guilty watching it alone. He’ll make sure to fill Billie in on what she’s missed during bath time. 

The kitchen timer sitting on the couch beside him scares him nearly out of his skin when it goes off and he needs a moment to remember what he was even timing in the first place. He starts back down the stairs and he’s totally _weary_ of it. Up and down.

Ted pauses in front of the dryer, quiet now but with warmth radiating from the metal shell. The Polaroids are still sitting there, of course, and he tries not to look at them while he dumps laundry from the front of the dryer into the basket and then replaces it with Bill and Jo’s things from the wash. He can’t just leave them there, but he can’t pretend he never saw them either. He could just put them in the bottom of the basket when everything is dry and leave it at the bottom of the stairs up to Bill and Jo’s place. No matter which he does, he doesn’t have plausible deniability and if he learned anything from listening to his dad talk about work that’s the key.

Ted reaches over to scoop them into the empty basket when he realizes something.

It’s not Joanna.

Ted squats down and picks the two glossy squares back up, like a car wreck he can’t look away from even though he knows he should.

 _It’s Bill_.

It’s Bill in a lady’s bathing suit. But not really because the only time he’s seen anything like that is on the cover of magazines he used to keep hidden under his mattress.

Ted’s face gets hot and his mouth gets dry. He should put the pictures down and walk away. When someone, anyone, either one of them gets home, he’ll just let them know their laundry is dry. They can come down and get it themselves. He can play dumb -- he’s pretty good at that.

Ted glares at his hands, willing them to work and put the Polaroids down. He’s just -- just _frozen_.

Bill looks…

Bill looks _good_.

Leaning in a doorway, the dark square of their bed behind him in the shadows cast by the camera flash -- his chin up -- eyes closed -- an arm lazily up over his head. He’s up on his toes and it makes his legs look miles long even if it weren’t for how high the thing he’s wearing sits up over his hips.

The second looks more like he’s been surprised. Laying on his stomach with the ruffly rose colored sheets Joanna liked all rumpled around him. He’s looking over his shoulder and his eyes are wide.

Ted clears his throat and finally drops the photos. He grabs his basket and bounds up the stairs two at a time.

* * *

It’s late when Bill gets home. He feels awful that Joanna had dinner alone but he just knew if he left the studio before he’d finished the song he’d been working on that it would all go to hell. He’d forget the chords if he slept on it, they’d never come back. He just needs Ted to write something to sing over it. Ted is a man of few words but when he put pencil to paper the most non-non-poetry just kind of tended to happen. 

This would be _the song_ , Bill thinks, the one they were searching for.

Joanna calls out from the back of the apartment to check that it’s Bill and he calls back that no, it’s Alexander the Great come to claim San Dimas. Jo seems non-bothered playing host to the conqueror. There’s a covered dish waiting in the kitchen for him and he’s too hungry to care that it’s only just barely warm. He inhales hunks of lasagna like there was a _Hoover_ somewhere back in his family tree and puts his dishes in the washer to run in the morning.

Bill unties the button down from his waist as he moves toward the bedroom, holding onto the sleeves and spinning it around, humming tunelessly to himself. When he pokes his head into her room, Thea is babbling contentedly up at the mobile circling above her. Her little voice echoes across the hall, coming out of the monitor sitting on their nightstand.

“Did you finish recording?” Jo asks from the bathroom, steam rolling across the bedroom floor from the open door.

“Yeah!” Bill is almost afraid to be excited about it but he can’t contain it once he starts telling her about the music. He thinks there’s a spot right in the middle for a _most_ triumphant drum solo. “It’ll be incredible,” he explains while he changes into his pajamas. “Think… think Phil Collins, but _better_.”

“Somewhere,” Jo laughs, “There is some musical deity who’s been wounded by that bit of blasphemy, William.”

Bill can’t help but laugh, too. Sitting on the bed, something on the floor in front of the dresser catches his eye. He moves to pick it up and blushes at the picture of himself. There’s bright, fuzzy stuff around the edges of the picture -- Jo’s hair falling around the camera while she sat astride him, peering down through the viewfinder. The memory of it makes his stomach flutter.

“Oh, _Princess_?”

“Yes, darling?”

Bill moseys over to the bathroom door and leans against the frame. He holds up the Polaroid and wiggles his eyebrows. “Did you miss me? Needed a little something for your shower?”

Joanna rolls her eyes and finishes tying off the bottom of her braid. “I wanted to wear my scarf today -- they were wrapped up in it.”

“Oh,” Bill says, only a little disappointed.

“It’s on the dresser, if you want to put them away.”

Bill sees the scarf and lifts it to his nose. It smells like Joanna’s hair, strawberry shampoo and something savory underneath. There’s nothing else on the dresser -- no pictures, at least. Just the one he picked up off the floor. There were more, he knows. He’s looked at them. He’s _posed_ for them. Bill opens the top drawer where they’d been tucked away and moves things around.

They’re not in the drawer.

He’s not going to panic, he decides. It’s not like they could have grown legs and walked away.

Bill swipes his foot in the narrow space under the dresser and feels something smooth. He pulls it back out and finds a second Polaroid -- he’s lounging in bed, naked as a saint and just about to bite into a slice of cold pizza. The rest must be under the dresser, too, he thinks and breathes a sigh of relief. It was a silly thing to be worried about. He’ll have to find something to reach toward the back with because he didn’t feel any more with his toes. He probably kicked them further underneath.

There’s a basket of laundry sitting beside the bed. He picks up the towel off the top and it smells like dryer sheets. “You had Thea all day _and_ made dinner _and_ did the wash?”

“Hmm?” The bathroom light goes out and Jo emerges, rubbing lotion into her hands. “No, just the former. I think Ted might have done it. I brought it down before I left this morning, when Bess and I came home it was sitting by the stairs waiting.

“Stand-up guy, that Theodore.”

“Indeed, perhaps we should keep him.” Jo frowns at the sound of Thea gearing up to wail and puts her hand up to stop Bill when he starts to go. “I’ll take care of her.” She nods at the basket. “You fold -- you know I’m hopeless.”

Bill laughs. All the little ways he’s reminded that Joanna actually _is_ a princess are always most entertaining. She couldn’t fold a towel in a straight square if her life depended on it -- long sleeved shirts are downright hilarious. Sometimes he suspects she’s doing it on purpose but he can’t bring himself to mind all that much.

He makes his way quickly through the towels and the handful of shirts, picking out tiny socks from the rumples and folds. 

Bill freezes when he gets to the bottom of the pile. He scoops up the last shirt and something falls out of it. Looking down between his feet at the empty basket he sees the two missing Polaroids. He balls up the shirt and sets it aside to snatch up the glossy squares -- photos of himself in the bodysuit Joanna gave him -- _everything_ on display. He’s suddenly very hot.

Bill springs up from where he’s sitting and bounds the short distance across the room. He grabs the other two photos and the scarf and haphazardly twists it all together in his hands as he’s opening the top drawer. He thrusts the bundle toward the back and closes the drawer just a little too hard, making the mirror on top sway.

Joanna yawns and stretches when she comes back into the room, remarking how easy it was to calm Thea down. Bill is dropping the short stacks of folded things back into the basket and kicking it out of the way, hardly hearing a thing Jo’s saying.

“Hello?” Jo steps up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist. She plants a kiss against his bare shoulder. “Earth to Bill?”

“Huh?”

“I asked if you liked the lasagna.”

“Oh, yeah, it was great.”

“Those people at _Stouffer’s_ know what they’re doing.” Bill laughs but his heart isn’t in it. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah! Just tired.”

“Well, we’ve got the perfect solution right here.” Jo pushes Bill forward toward the bed with her hips and he snorts, momentarily amused.

Settled down in the darkness, Bill listens to Jo’s soft snoring and watches the green glow of the little light on the monitor.

He doesn’t sleep.

* * *

Bill and Ted circle each other warily for days.

They work in the studio. They hang out with the princesses. They hang out with the kids.

Ted knows that Bill knows that  _ he _ knows.

Bill knows that Ted knows that  _ he _ knows.

_ Gymboree  _ day rolls around and they’re left alone with Bill’s song and nothing else to distract them. All the ladies are gone until dinnertime and the whole house is quiet except for Bill picking out the base melody on the strings of the new-shellac-shiny acoustic in his arms.

Ted thinks three things: First, this thing Bill’s written just might be  _ the thing _ . Second, Bill is sitting very close. Closer than he has in the last week -- they’re sitting on the couch in Ted’s place with only the one cushion between them. Third, Bill’s arm hanging over the body of the guitar is -- something.

Bill stops playing and scratches his head. His hair has gotten kind of long. His curls bounce around with the movement of his hand. With nothing else to distract Ted, it _is_ most distracting.

“I think that the lyrics should be something peaceful, you know? Something that makes you feel as excited as  _ Jump _ but… but chilled out like  _ Easy _ . I’m not sure which version, though. Somewhere between them.”

Ted puts his pencil down and moves his hair out of his face. He needs a shower, he thinks, and wipes his hand against his jeans. “Bill, I gotta… I gotta tell you something, dude.”

Bill hugs his guitar like it’s a shield. “It’s okay, Ted. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Sorry you… sorry you saw that. I’m sure you saw it. Like, most positively sure you saw.”

“Well, that’s okay, dude.”

“No,  _ no _ . It’s not. You shouldn’t have -- I shouldn’t have -- it was a dumb idea. My dad had Thea that weekend and we got a little silly, you know? I got rid of them. It was dumb.” Bill can’t stop talking. The words just keep coming like being sick in the worst way.

“My friend, it wasn’t dumb.”

“Yeah, it --”

“ _ Ithoughtyoulookednice _ .”

“What?”

Ted clears his throat. “I thought you looked nice.” He clears his throat again, stalling. Bill’s ears are turning red. “Like you were enjoying yourself. Having fun.”

“It was -- “

“Private. And -- and an accident that I saw. I didn’t want you to be embarrassed, so I just pretended it didn’t happen.”

“Well, I was embarrassed anyway.” Bill relaxes and stops clutching the guitar so close. “Jo doesn’t know you saw.”

“I won’t tell.”

“Good.” Bill sets the guitar down in the stand. He feels weird -- relieved. He’s glad Ted doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. It would have been most non-non- _ non- _ triumphant to know that Ted… found it weird. Thought less of him. Something. 

And he doesn’t want Jo to be embarrassed, either. She put so much time and thought into what she did. They had so much… fun. Ted was right they had  _ so much fun _ . And it had made Bill feel  _ transcendent _ . He liked the way he looked. He liked the way he felt. He liked the way it felt when when they were together like that and she kept telling him how bodacious he looked and --

“Bill, your face is very red, dude.”

Bill rubs his cheeks and fixes his hair again. He twirls the clump of curls in the front, turning himself into Clark Kent and trying to hide that his face is most definitely very red. He can feel it, he doesn’t need Ted to tell him. “We should work on the song, dude. This is it.”

“But,  _ Bill _ , I gotta  _ tell _ you something, dude.”

“You already told me.”

“No! Not that, not -- you didn’t let me say it.”

Bill swallows around a brick jammed in his throat and looks up at Ted.

_ Ted’s _ face is very red. And scrunched up like he’s upset. And Bill thinks that this  _ is _ it. It’s just not the  _ it _ he thought it would be. Bill almost laughs out loud, thinking of what Ted would say if their positions were flipped:  _ I have a very bad feeling about this _ .

Ted finally whispers so quietly, Bill thinks he’s gone deaf. “I thought you looked very nice.”

“You said that already.” Bill feels like he needs to be quiet, too, or he might shatter something like all of a sudden he’s  _ Black Canary _ .

“You… you’ve got -- you’ve got very nice legs,” Ted says all in a rush. “For a short dude, that is.”

Something shatters anyway. Bill feels like he’s been struck with the most heinous number of tiny shards of… something. Ted shifts slightly closer, his own leg crossing the divide between the cushion he’s sitting on and the one between them.

“Fag,” Bill whispers and smacks Ted’s arm in a most good-natured gesture. It does nothing to dispel the tension. It always used to -- a hug just a few seconds too long, a very sincere compliment, a look that lingered and made his stomach flip over --  _ fag! _ and everything was fine again and they were laughing.

Ted is unfazed. “I’ve been… I’ve been thinking about it a lot. The pictures. I mean --  _ not _ , you know,  _ thinking about them _ \-- but --” Bill watches him put his hand down. His fingers make nervous dents in the cushion. “What was that? Is it.. Is it Joanna’s?”

Bill sticks his chin in the air and Ted is worried he’s really insulted him. “No, it’s mine.”

“Oh.” Ted looks at the scribbles in his notebook, sitting forgotten on the coffee table. “ _ Oh _ .”

“Oh, what?” Bill asks, not sure whether to be offended or not. When Ted looks back at him his face is open and curious. His eyes are wide and his red-faced flusterment has settled into rosy cheeks.

“What is it like?” Ted doesn’t realize it when she shifts closer, just by fractions. He wants to know. Needs to.

“I don’t know man, like a bathing suit. Just less durable, I guess. I wouldn’t wear it to the beach or anything. You’d get heinous tan lines.” Bill knows that’s not what Ted means but he doesn’t really want to say it. “It’s… it’s  _ nice _ . It feels nice. Makes me feel nice.”

“That’s nice.” Ted feels dumb saying it but he feels like he has to say something.

“Jo likes it.”

“That’s good.”

They both look away from each other. On one side of the room, Bill can see into the kitchen and the microwave clock that’s blinking  _ 12:00  _ even though it’s ten in the morning. On the other, Ted looks out the front window. There’s a pair of squirrels fighting on the branch just outside.

“Did you --  _ do you _ , ah, like it?”

Ted hadn’t considered it. Not that way. Not the way Bill is saying it. Ted doesn’t think he’d like it if it weren’t Bill -- or Elizabeth, of course, but that wasn’t what he was being asked. Bill was asking if Ted liked  _ Bill _ in that most singular scenario.

“Bill, I think I do.” Ted shifts closer on purpose this time. Bill yanks his head backward when Ted reaches out and looks cross-eyed down his nose at where Ted is hooking a fingertip into the collar of his teeshirt and pulling it away from his neck. Ted leans forward like he’s looking down into Bill’s shirt and grins. “Just checking.”

There is a second of perfectly still silence before they fall to pieces laughing. Bill shoves Ted’s hand away. “You  _ are _ a fag,” he cackles, falling back against the arm of the couch under the weight of all the tension he’d been holding onto. 

Ted slips forward, unbalanced, and his hand comes down hard on Bill’s thigh. They both look at it like it’s got a mind of its own, possessed. If either bothered to ask the other, they’d both know the other felt very hot, very warm -- like they were full of soup instead of muscles and bones.

Ted shifts, moving deliberately forward, and Bill does nothing to stop him. He just keeps staring and waiting. He puts his hand down on Bill’s waist and waits, too. Waits for Bill to move or flinch or tell him to stop.

Bill’s head is full of static and the the  _ thumpthumpthump _ of his own heartbeat and Ted is moving into the utmost proximity. It’s unnerving and Bill doesn’t want him to stop.

“Is this okay?” Ted asks, as innocent as if he’s just putting his arm around a babe’s shoulders in a theater.

It’s strange and it’s new and it’s nothing that Bill’s ever considered before but he’s not in any big hurry to tell Ted to get away. It feels  _ natural _ . Like it’s been something they’ve done their whole life -- as intuitive as turning toward each other and plucking guitar strings in the air.

“Bill?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

Ted’s hair is hanging into Bill’s face and they’re breathing at each other like they don’t have any other choice in the matter. 

Bill’s brain shuts off and something else takes over. He pushes up with his shoulders and his face smacks into Ted’s most clumsily. They stare at each other wide-eyed for a moment before Bill tries it again, more careful this time. He touches Ted’s lips with his and Ted gasps but he doesn’t move.

“Is this okay?” Bill asks, right up against Ted’s face. He’s afraid to move away.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

When they finally really kiss, it’s soft and chaste until it’s not. Ted lets himself lay against Bill, just put his weight onto him. He feels like he should have been doing this for years, like it’s the natural order of things.

“Oh  _ no _ ,” Bill groans and Ted is confused. Should he stop? He moves his legs, trying to get up and he realizes Bill’s got a fully full-on chubby -- and  _ that _ goes straight to his head like a dumb teenager. “ _ Oh _ .”

Ted hides his face against the arm of the couch beside Bill’s head and he can’t help the shaky feeling in the middle of his body when Bill wraps his arms around him real tight. “Fag,” Ted mumbles into the couch and Bill laughs out loud.

“We’re in a predicament,” Bill says, like they’ve just got a flat tire on the side of the road. “I don’t know what to do, Ted,” he whispers.

Ted worms a hand between them and adjusts his dick in his jeans so he doesn’t feel so crushed and Bill makes a noise like a cartoon. He doesn’t seem like he realizes what he’s doing when jerks his hips against Ted, his hand still trapped between them.

“Wait,” Ted croaks. “Lemmie --” He gets his hand out and drops his weight, plants the toe of one sneaker against the floor, the other floating up in the air with his knee practically in the spring under the cushions. “What it…”

Ted jerks his hips and  _ oh it’s interesting _ . He turns his face, Bill’s hair tickling his nose so he almost sneezes right in his ear. They figure it out slowly, getting their legs to fit together and working out how to move. It's not really great until Bill stops holding Ted in such a death grip and they can both breath and then it’s  _ really great _ .

Bill can feel his dick rubbing against his underwear and the inside of his jeans and he can feel Ted’s weight against him and  _ god _ , he can feel Ted’s dick, hard as anything, rubbing against his leg. The cottony confusion in Bill’s brain starts to clear and his body remembers that there’s some kind of end that rubbing up against things like this should lead to.

Blowing his load in his pants is only distantly embarrassing. Like it’s not really Bill that’s just done it, it’s not Bill that’s sticky and uncomfortable.

Ted takes longer and Bill doesn’t complain. He’s too astonished. Ted breathes hard in Bill’s ear and goes all limp like a rag doll. “Ugh, no,” he grumbles. “Heinous.”

“Bogus.”

“Non-triumphant.”

Bill doesn’t think so, but he doesn’t contradict Ted. It’s easier to make his mind stop racing if he plays along and he thinks Ted might be doing the same. Ted rolls off of him and sits down hard on the floor between the couch and the table, exhausted looking. Bill cringes as he moves, trying to sit up straight and ignore everything happening most unfortunately in his jeans.

“So,” Bill says. “About that song.”

“Yeah, Bill?”

“Maybe we should take five.”

Ted nods and hoists himself back up onto the couch. “I think five would be good.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! I love comments :)
> 
> I haven't quite settled on what direction I want the final part of this trilogy to go, whether I want it to be a dream or reality. Ahh! Decisions, decisions!
> 
> [Find me here.](https://aryagreenleaf.carrd.co/)


End file.
